The house was designed in 1885, by Stanford White. The garden, by Nathan Barrett included an allee and two terraces. Mabel Choate inherited the house and from 1926 onwards developed the gardens with Fletcher Steele as her landscape architect. Their work included the Afternoon Garden, the Chinese Garden with a Moon Gate and the Blue Steps. The latter is the garden's most famous feature. A flight of steps with arched blue recesses and a white Art Nouveau handrail ascends through paper-white birch trees.